A press release from rightmove.co.uk says the UK market leader will be launching a Beta version of its website on 8 June 2009. The Beta site is to trial sellers’ and agents’ response to a publicised suggested retail price of £95 for upgrading their property to its Premium Listing advert for a month.
The company says that the Beta trial will be in the Hull and East Riding area following requests from some leading local agents for Rightmove to set a suggested retail price to help them sell Premium Listings on to potential sellers in their location.
“Premium Listing is the new name for Premium Display, a high impact advert on Rightmove to help get both sellers and agents more leads and hopefully a quicker sale. Extensive research by Rightmove has found that a Premium Listing advert upgrade will, on average, generate 21% more enquiries and attract 34% more property detail views than a standard listing. Benefitting from a larger photo(s), bolder and larger fonts, a highlighted silver background and an attention-grabbing bright red label, Premium Listing can help to speed up the house-selling process”, says the company.
Miles Shipside, commercial director of Rightmove comments: “We know Premium Listing can work wonders for agents and sellers in increasing click-through rates to full details and generating more leads. By setting a price on site, we hope we have a solution suited to this tough market where agents can benefit from more business opportunities at no cost to them, or even create some extra revenue.”
He added: “Some leading agents in the East Riding area asked Rightmove to set a suggested retail price on the site that they could clearly point to when selling the better advert to their existing and potential vendors. It’s an opportunity for the agent to generate more leads, either by the seller paying Rightmove for the upgrade on site, or the agent creating additional revenue by selling it themselves. It also obviously helps Rightmove sell more Premium Listings too.”
Premium Listing upgrades are only available to sellers who are marketing through Rightmove member agents. The company says there will be no relenting on the ban on private sellers and sellers of non-members will also not be allowed to list properties on the website. The pricing policy will also limit the number of Premium Listings, preserving their exclusivity and performance.
Premium Listing is still available to agent members, priced between £12.50 – £35 for the life of the listing. This means that agents can sell the Premium Listings themselves either as part of a package or individually and still make a substantial profit. Rightmove does caution that a Premium Listing is not a ‘silver bullet’ for a sale, and sellers should be considering their property price and presentation too. The company hopes this will give agents more regular opportunities to persuade stubborn sellers to reduce asking prices, which will also lead to more sales of existing stock.
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rightmove are in cuckoo land. If a house needs to sell – drop the stupid asking prices. Property has been overpriced by agents for years.